Alan Berecka

Don Wall passed away about a year ago from some rare blood infection.  I never met him, yet his absense is a huge hole in my life. I suppose we were  pen pals, but I counted him as a dear friend.

Getting to know him was a small miracle.   Another friend from graduate school, Randy Bowley, was living out in Washington,  working as a librarian at a boarding school in Yakima. He had bought a copy of my  first chapbook from UNT.  He then lent the book to a friend on the English faculty  were he worked. His friend belonged to a writers circle which included his creative  writing teacher from Eastern Washington University, professor emeritus Don Wall.  Don was taken by the chapbook.  He tracked me down via email, I think through Randy, and our correspondance began. It started with Don writing me a fan letter. But it didn’t stop there.  He did everything he could to promote my writing.  I think he must of bought close to a dozen copies of the book, giving them away to friends, former students and colleagues.  He was certain that it was only a matter of getting the book in the right hands to foster my literary career.  He was an ebullient man. Not manic; I never encountered a down Don, at least when his health was good.

Don asked me to look at his poetry and make suggestions to him.  I’m a librarian. The man was a professor emeritus, but I tried my best. He told me often that I needed to get out of the library biz and teach creative writing, telling me often that I had a light but deft touch. When the Flaw came out Don, worked to place it in independent book stores in the Northwest, sent copies to Scandinavia, and kept buying and handing them out.

Our notes to each other touched on many things: worries for our children, and our shared love of soccer(Don captained the Syracuse U men’s team as an undergrad, I kept the bench secure for the University of Dallas). Don sent me his favorite books to read. He was an agnostic, and we wrote and explored notions of belief and doubt. Last year at spring break, I had planned to go out to Washington and meet him.  His health failed around the New Year, and he passed away before the break. I miss him. I wonder what he would have thought of Remembering the Body.  I’m excited that the new book is out, but it’s bitter sweet for me.  I keep thinking about all the folks who have lent my writing their support over the years who aren’t here anymore.  Men like Randy Bowley, Les Palmer and Don.

Welcome!  Folks have told me for years, “Alan, you need to get a web page.”   It sounded so easy.  But I soon found out, it was a task far beyond my limited technological skills and knowledge.  Questions like where to host; who should I get a domain from; who has idiot proof web page tools as part of the deal; who might be patient enough to talk a  neophyte through this process?  All these questions left me feeling like Matthew Arnold’s Empdeocles on Etna. I was frozen, unable to make a decision, from either too much or too little information. At one point in the quest, I thought my daughter might have saved me by marrying a web engineer.  But, for newlyweds who moved from Dallas to Chicago and then Berlin in little over a year, an extra web project was easily lost in the bustle of a new life and jobs.  Not wanting to seem a complete schmuck, I let the project go to a back burner until I figured the pilot light went out. But now what?  I figured I’d ask my friends one last time to try and find some answers. Friends with web sites actually didn’t seem to know much more than I did. Many had received pages from friends, family or fans. But then I asked Steven Schroeder, the Renaissance Man of Chicago and VAC Poetry,whom he would suggest.  Steve told me who he used to post VAC’s excellent site vacpoetry.org.  But then he said he was willing to hire on as a web master, taking care of design and domains all for a reasonable fee.  I signed on in a heartbeat. In about two months, the site is up and running.  Steve has endured an onslaught of questions, mainly me asking how I screwed things up and if he could fix it.  For years, I’ve been awed by Steve’s poetry, intelligence and zeal for life.  Now, I need to add his technological savvy and patience to the list. My gratitude to him for doing this is boundless.  The picture above was snapped at The Scissortail Festival in Ada, Oklahoma in 2008.  The caption is supposed to say, A wise man suffers a wise ass, but it didn’t quite work; maybe someday Steve will fix that too.